A few days ago, I was chatting with some friends who are deeply involved in the DeFi space, and the topic shifted to oracles. One of them mentioned their development of a prediction market project, which recently made an interesting technical choice — switching all their existing oracle solutions to a new subscription-based service.

I was curious at the time, since leading oracle solutions have accumulated years of ecosystem development, with a huge market cap, comprehensive documentation, and toolchains. Why switch?

He ran some numbers for me, and that’s when I understood. Their prediction market mainly deals with sports data, like NBA and American football, where scores update every minute. Using the traditional pay-per-call model, just pulling data for a single game costs hundreds of dollars. Over a season, these costs become unsustainable.

But the new solution is completely different. They offer an Oracle-as-a-Service subscription plan with three tiers: Basic, Pro, and Premium. Once subscribed, developers can make unlimited calls without worrying about API costs each time. This is a lifesaver for applications with high-frequency data needs. To put it simply, it’s like having a gym membership — with the card in hand, you can go whenever you want, without paying each time you swipe the door.

More importantly, the sports data module launched with this service covers a wide range of mainstream sports — NBA, NFL, soccer, boxing, rugby, badminton — all supported, with near real-time push updates, latency controlled within seconds. For prediction markets that require extremely timely data, this is crucial.

Listening to him, I finally understood why this model can attract developers. It’s not just about saving money; it fundamentally changes the cost structure — from uncertain, usage-based costs to predictable fixed costs. This is a big help for startup teams’ financial planning.